


our ever-changing souls

by acaciapines



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/F, Pre-Relationship, takes place during episode 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29267805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaciapines/pseuds/acaciapines
Summary: When Luz had first met Amity, it was only after the dust had settled and her new friend Willow helped her up that Luz asked, “who was that?”“Amity and Alma,” Willow said darkly. “Thinks she’s so much better than us just because she was the first person in our grade to Settle.”“Settle?” Maritza asked, sitting back as she went from jerboa to maned wolf, russet-brown fur against Luz’s leg. The two of them had shared a look:Alma.Rather on-the-nose for a daemon. “Huh."(or: luz, amity, and their daemons meet in a library)
Relationships: Amity Blight/Luz Noceda
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66





	our ever-changing souls

**Author's Note:**

> you shouldn't need any detailed knowledge about daemon aus to understand this fic. just the basics: daemons are the other half of a person in animal form, and can shift into any animal shape until they 'settle' into one form, which says something about their human, around adulthood (so, 17-21). a human and daemon can also only go a certain number of feet apart without being in pain and eventually dying.

When Luz had first met Amity—well, saw, she’d meet her more properly later—it was only after the dust had settled and her new friend Willow helped her up that Luz asked, “who was that?”

“Amity and Alma,” Willow said darkly, her daemon shifting from the eight-legged sandy beetle he’d been, into a large green butterfly double the size of Luz’s hand. He fluttered up to rest in Willow’s hair. “Thinks she’s _so_ much better than us just because she was the first person in our grade to Settle.”

“Settle?” Maritza asked, sitting back as she went from jerboa to maned wolf, russet-brown fur against Luz’s leg. The two of them had shared a look: _Alma._ Rather on-the-nose for a daemon. “Huh. Well, what is she?”

Amity’s daemon hadn’t been an animal Luz had ever seen—though, seeing as she could say the same for the majority of the daemons she’d met on the Boiling Isles, that didn’t mean much. Alma had been vaguely foxlike, if Luz was to make the comparison, four-legged and with a pointy muzzle, smaller than a red fox though not by much. Her fur was thick, mostly cream with darker areas around the paws and muzzle. Down her back there were…spines, maybe, something ridged but more blunted than spiked at the tips, though when Amity had laughed at Willow, her daemon had sat back, and those spines flashed out, like there were two sets of them side-by-side. Alma had horns, small, nubby ones, and her tail, rather than being fluffy, was skinny with a tuft of fur at the end.

“A White-spined fox,” Willow had said. “They’re not even native to the isles, so I don’t know how she ever saw one to Settle as.” Willow paused, her and her daemon looking down at Maritza. “Actually, speaking of daemon forms, what are you? I’ve never seen either of the animals you’ve been so far.”

“Ha, so about that,” Luz had said, and launched into her whole ‘I’m-a-human-so-me-and-Maritza-take-animal-forms-from-our-world,’ spiel, thoughts of Amity and Alma forgotten.

* * *

Weeks later, and Luz is waiting outside the library late at night, absolutely not panicking about the cool older kids who invited her here, who wanted to hang out with her. In a similar vein, Maritza is _not_ pacing in front of her, once a maned wolf, twice a capybara, thrice a pudú, tiny hooves clicking against the stone.

“None of these are _neat enough,”_ Maritza says, her voice frantic. She flies up as a sleek-feathered pygmy owl to nip at Luz’s finger. “Should I try to look like King again? What if I can’t hold onto it for more than a minute like every other time I try and fall back as a _maned wolf!_ I can’t fall as a maned wolf, I’ll trip over my own stupidly long legs!”

“We really need to pester Eda and King harder for baby pictures,” Luz says. It’s not like Maritza _can’t_ take the shapes of animals from the Boiling Isles, more like it’s very, very hard to do so when Luz has only seen most of the animals from a distance, and the ones she’s spent more time with are daemons, and that’s not exactly the same thing. “Though I guess I’m not sure if King looked different when he was younger? He and Eda both say he’s a demon and I thought daemons could just be animals but who knows anymore.”

Maritza lands on the ground, a maned wolf again, black mane bristling up with their nerves. “Okay. Okay. We’re cool! I’m not going to lose my shape again. No Boiling Isles animals.”

“I think you look nice like this,” Luz says. Maritza grins up at her, but her ears pin back.

“Thanks,” she says, and then she rears up onto her hind legs, balancing her forelegs against Luz. “Now! You! Don’t just stand there, we have to pose and look intentional!”

Luz stumbles backwards, and Maritza lets her go by leaping upwards as an owl, flying circles around Luz’s head. “C’mon! Lean against the column, we’ve gotta try harder, here.”

“On it,” Luz agrees, and she and her daemon spend the next few minutes figuring out poses. Maritza still isn’t exactly happy with maned wolf, Luz can tell, but it’s not like she has any other form suggestions. They’ve got their regular forms, and they’ve got owls, recently, but none of them are contenders for the animals of the Boiling Isles. They’re all too…plain.

“Maned wolves have really tall legs, though,” Luz is saying, as she tries to balance on just one foot, leaning the other against one of the columns at the library’s entrance, “if they were a bit more oddly colored and I saw one here and never saw one back home, I think they’d fit right in.”

“Maybe I can change my fur color,” Maritza says, squeezing her eyes shut. When she opens them again, looking to Luz hopefully, Luz shakes her head.

“Still russet,” she says. “Tropical birds, maybe?”

“Not familiar enough with them,” Maritza growls, “oh, we should’ve—” she stiffens, her ears pricking up, “I think I hear them, quick quick—”

Luz has toppled over under her daemon’s weight when Emira and Edric appear. Maritza goes jerboa-shaped in an instance as Luz scrambles to her feet, cupping Maritza in her palm. Once she’s up, Maritza shifts into a pygmy owl and sets down on Luz’s shoulder.

“Hi!” Luz says. “Hi, hello, great to see you, how long were you standing there? Not long, I hope.” Maritza runs her beak through her feathers; Luz hopes none get stuck in her hair.

“Long enough,” Emira says. Her daemon—and her brother’s, for that matter—are both in different forms than they were when Luz first met them. Unsettled, then. Emira’s is some sort of reptile, like a large lizard, with purple-patched scales, and Edric’s a bird, much larger than pygmy owl-Maritza, with blue and faded red plumage. “It’s cute, though, keep doing it.” She smirks. Her lizard-shaped daemon blinks at them, friendly.

Luz flushes. Maritza plucks out a lose feather. Puffs out her chest for half a second before dropping it.

“Ha,” Luz says, “so, uh.”

Edric and Emira are already heading for the library door, and Luz hurries after them. Maritza lasts a second more on her shoulder before dropping off, landing at Luz’s feet as a capybara.

“Ooh, what’s that?” Edric asks, pausing in opening the door to glance at Maritza.

“A capybara,” Maritza says.

“Big rodent,” Luz elaborates.

“Neat,” Edric says, and he sounds genuine about it.

“We don’t get those here,” his daemon says. “What other human-animals can you guys do?”

“ _Well,”_ Luz says, and she’s grinning as they enter the library.

It’s…chaos, from there, but the fun sort of chaos. Turns out that ‘wailing star’ event the librarian mentioned when Luz came by in the morning makes all the books come to life when they’re opened, and they play around with that, making outfits and finding animals, their daemons trying to take their shapes to varying results. Maritza shows off more human-animals, even goes for a dolphin despite there not being any water and the fact she's only able to hold it for a few moments, and Luz laughs as she watches Edric and Emira’s daemons try to take those forms—they have as much trouble with it as Luz and Maritza do with Boiling Isles animals, and it’s nice to know it’s not just a Luz thing.

But all fun comes to an end. Luz is feeling uncomfortable when Edric and Emira start to draw in books, half because the resulting creations to come out are honestly terrifying, and half because the book they want Luz to draw in is the same one she saw Amity and Alma reading to some kids earlier, which is…

“I’m not going to draw in it,” Maritza says, and she very gently takes _Otabin-Fia the Bookbinder_ in her mouth and out of Luz’s hands. She’s a maned wolf, at the moment, and her mane is only somewhat prickling.

“Well then, we’ll do it,” Edric says, his own daemon snagging the book in his talons and dropping it into Edric’s hands. Maritza doesn’t fight it, just curls her tail around Luz’s ankle. “And…there!” The bird-daemon puffs out his chest as Edric flips the book around to show them. They’ve given Otabin angry eyebrows, sharp claws and teeth, and his spiderlike daemon Fia bat wings and two long arms, topped with claws at the end.

“It’s…great,” Luz lies, but thankfully the two don’t press her on it, instead dragging her off to one final place. They stop in front of the romance section, and Luz blinks up at it. At her side, Maritza tilts her head.

“What are we doing here?” she asks.

“This,” Emira’s daemon says, lizard-shaped on her shoulder and grinning mischievously at Luz and Maritza, “is why we really came here. Observe.”

Emira steps forwards, pulls out one of the books, and the entire bookshelf swings back and opens into a secret room.

“ _Woah,”_ Luz breathes, “that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” Maritza’s tail is wagging as they rush in, looking up and around the room. “I’ve always wanted a cool secret room like this! How do you guys know about it?” Luz turns back to look at the twins, who have since entered, while Maritza takes to the air as a pygmy owl, to get a better look.

“It’s Amity’s secret hideout,” Edric says. “Little Mittens doesn’t know we know about it.”

“Oh,” Luz says. That’s…should she be in here? “So, are we going to like, move all her books three spaces to the left, or…?”

Emira pulls out a handful of books, flips through them, and shoves them back. “Nah,” she says, “we’re looking for her diary.”

In the air, Maritza pauses mid-wingstroke, and drops back to the ground. She lands as a capybara, frowning. “Isn’t that kind of private?”

“We’re her siblings,” Edric says, waving a hand, “it’s fine.”

“Besides,” his daemon adds, “you’ve seen Mittens. Doesn’t seem like she’s the nicest to you, and she goes around all high-and-mighty, just because Alma went and _Settled,”_ Edric does air quotes as his daemon speaks, “young.”

“I guess it must be weird having a younger sibling who Settled before you,” Luz says, but there something uncomfortable pricking in her gut. But then again she’s an only child, maybe this is normal?

“Yeah, pretty much,” Emira says, continuing to rifle through the books. “Anyways, we’re going to paste the best pages all around the school, so if you can help us look that would be great.”

“Around the _school?!”_ Luz says, and Maritza stumbles back with their shock, only stopping when she goes hummingbird-shaped and darts up in the air, tiny iridescent wings beating rapidly.

“Well!” Maritza says, “this has been fun and all, but I really think that’s our cue to go, I really don’t feel comfortable with this and don’t want to—Luz, what are you doing?”

In Luz’s attempts to follow her daemon to the door she’s caught sight of something even better: “Is that books 1 through 4 of _The Good Witch Azura-Leandro?”_ She’s already rushing towards them even as Maritza says something about _leaving, we’re leaving!_ but Luz didn’t even know the Boiling Isles could get these books, and does that mean Amity is a _fan?_ And Luz _didn’t know?_

“Luz,” Maritza says, zipping over to her. She lands on the shelf in her jerboa form, but only makes it about halfway through _should we leave—_ before she stops, tilts her head. Her tiny forepaws reach out and tug something from between the pages of one of the books, and Luz takes it. “Did Amity make _fanart?”_

“This is the best moment of my life,” Luz decides, staring in awe at what is most definitely fanart of Amity and Alma as Azura and her lion daemon Leandro. It’s actually kind of adorable. Curious if there’s any more, Luz opens up the book, and Maritza hops up and crouches down to rest the front half of her body on the pages.

“Seems like some sort of—” Maritza starts, but she leaps back, when a tiny Amity and Alma come out of it. But Alma is a bumblebee rather than a fox—did she Settle recently?

“I saw that human girl again,” tiny-Amity says, and that’s when it hits Luz that oh, she’s reading whatever she wrote in her diary, huh? “I may have over reacted. I—”

Luz slams the diary shut, but she’s too late; Edric and Emira are already coming over.

“Hey, you found it!” Edric says, going to take the diary from her. “Thanks, Luz, didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Actually!” Luz says, yanking the book away. Maritza darts around and off the shelf, shifting mid-jump into her owl form, sudden enough to startle Edric out of the way. “How about I just, I don’t know, take this and you don’t? Just a thought?” She inches backwards along the shelf, trying to get to the door. Above her, Maritza flaps her wings and puffs out her chest.

Unfortunately, keeping her eyes on the twins means Luz isn’t exactly watching behind her, and she steps wrong, twisting and nearly falling. She’s fine, but the diary isn’t, crashing open to the floor, loose pages fluttering out. On each of them, a small Amity and Alma come out, reading the pages aloud. Luz doesn’t want to hear any of this—it’s Amity’s private life and she is _not_ digging into that—so she kneels down to try and grab them all and stuff the pages back in the diary. Maritza dives down to do the same.

“This is so bad,” Luz mutters to herself, grabbing the diary and snapping it closed. The twins are both laughing, and Luz wants to turn and _snap_ at them, because in what world is stealing your sister’s diary and putting pages around the school a good prank?

And that’s when Luz looks up, and sees Amity staring down at her in wide-eyed horror. Maritza has a handful of loose pages grabbed in her talons, the only part of her moving her wings as she hovers in place, having stopped trying to shove them back into the diary that Luz is holding in her arms.

“Amity!” Luz yelps, “this isn’t—”

Alma _snarls,_ and Luz barely has time to register the little fox-daemon baring sharp teeth, crouching down with all her spines flaring out, before she’s launched herself at Maritza, tackling her out of the air.

“Give that back!” Alma demands, slamming her paws down against Maritza’s chest. Maritza’s brown and white feathers are puffed up and a few are drifting in the air, having been torn out. Luz feels her daemon’s bird-light heart fluttering in her chest. “You—I expected this from the twins but not—not—”

“This isn’t what it looks like!” Luz protests, hoping Maritza has Alma handed and turning to Amity instead. “Amity, I swear, I wasn’t reading it, I was trying to get your siblings to stop!”

Wordlessly, Amity storms forwards and yanks the diary from Luz’s grip. Luz does nothing to stop her, just stares. Amity looks almost…sad, under all that anger, but Alma’s still shrieking and her claws are pinpricks against Maritza’s feathers. Maritza’s not fighting back, just tugging herself free in an upsurge of her wings, going around and twisting back, landing heavy in her maned wolf-form, easily twice Alma’s size.

“Stop _biting_ me!” Maritza says, tossing her head. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know that was your diary.”

“Oh, sure you didn’t,” Alma snaps. Her back is arched like a cat, tense. Her ears are flat against her skull.

“Amity,” Luz tries, but Amity ignores her, turning sharp on her heel in clear dismissal.

“You know,” Alma says, “I’ve really been trying to figure you out, Luz-Maritza. Try and solve your whole…deal.” She huffs and shakes her head. “But I know now. You’re just a bully.”

“Alma—” Maritza lifts a paw, as if to step closer to the fox-daemon, but Alma bares her teeth. When Maritza freezes, Alma whips around, and darts after Amity, the pair disappearing at the next turn.

“Argh! No! Wait!” Luz calls. Nothing. The twins are still snickering quietly to themselves.

Maritza’s mane bristles. “This is _not_ funny,” she says, and she’s the first one to rush after Amity and Alma, with a yell of, “please, just let us explain!”

They aren’t too far, thankfully, and it’s easy enough for Luz and Maritza to catch up. Alma doesn’t glance their way, head held high, snout upturned, but Amity does.

“What,” she asks, flatly.

“I just…” Luz starts, but she trails off. Amity doesn’t even look mad anymore—Alma’s easily got that covered—just upset. “I’m really, _really_ sorry. I swear I didn’t know that’s what the twins were doing, I—”

“Oh, would you just shut up?” Alma spits, tail lashing. “Every time you’re around us you either make us look bad or do something to embarrass us. Can’t you just leave us alone? We don’t go around stalking you!”

Maritza’s ears go flat. “ _You’re_ the one who came to the library,” she points out.

“Yeah, because my siblings are here! Seems to me the only one who doesn’t fit into this picture is _you,”_ Alma hisses. She storms forwards, and adds, a growl to her tone, “leave me _alone,_ human. Go hang out with your own weird friends.”

“Hey!” Luz protests, because there’s no reason for Alma to go insulting her friends like that, but before she can get out another word Maritza tenses, leaping into the air as an owl.

“Shh,” her daemon says, tilting her head both ways, “I heard something.” She pauses, hovering mid-flight, before she screeches and dives to the left just as a massive daemon comes descending from the air, narrowing missing her. Luz yelps and ducks, and Amity and Alma scatter—Alma further down, Amity closer to her.

“What _is_ that!” Amity yells, as the daemon swoops over them again. Maritza shrinks into a jerboa just in time, avoid the terrifying massive pair of _human hands_ that the otherwise spiderlike daemon has. “Wait,” she says, “that almost looks like…”

Maritza goes capybara-shaped, skidding down the floor and into Luz’s chest. “Why did it get _massive!”_ she demands, “it has _bat wings!_ And ten arms if you count the human ones and the spider ones!”

Before Luz can even think of a response to that that isn’t just screaming in terrified agreement, a shape appears at the end of the shelves, one Luz honestly should’ve expected. His daemon _did_ just try to nab Maritza, after all.

The monster, like his daemon, has gotten much larger, his face furrowed in anger, long claws that scrape against the floor, and sharp teeth. In one hand he’s holding a needle, though it’s massive too, easily as tall as Luz. Pressed into his chest is _Otabin the Bookbinder,_ open to the page Edric drew over, though Luz does have to admit that Otabin is still a lot nicer-looking than the monster in front of them.

“What did you do to Otabin and Fia?” Amity demands, realization dawning on her face.

“Don’t blame me, blame your brother!” Maritza says.

“I’m going to _kill him,”_ Alma snarls from somewhere behind them.

“With claws and fangs and breaking bones,” Monster-Otabin says as he approaches, his voice deep and rasping. He smiles with far-to-sharp teeth, and monster-Fia lands at his side, bat wings flared out. “I’ve found a friend to make my own.”

He charges.

Luz and Maritza throw themselves out of the way, Maritza going owl-shaped as she does so, and when Luz rolls to a stop Maritza’s talons catch in her hoodie, deep enough to poke into her skin. But Luz barely feels it, because Amity isn’t moving. _Amity isn’t moving._ Alma is running, further down and cramming herself into an open spot on the shelves, but Amity isn’t, why isn’t she, Luz thought she would _run_ but now Luz just abandoned her—

Amity is grabbed.

Alma isn’t.

Luz and Maritza can do nothing but stare in utter horror as the pair is dragged apart.

* * *

A few days after she’d moved in with Eda and King, after many late-night sessions of her and Maritza arguing over what to say and if it was prying or not, Luz went downstairs one morning, and, without any time for Maritza to second-guess things, asked, “Eda, are all witches separated from their daemons?”

“Hmm?” Eda had looked over at her, pausing in where she’d been rummaging through a new pile of junk she must’ve just brought in. “No, not all of them. It’s not a requirement, if that’s what you’re asking. Just a thing the most powerful of witches can do.”

“Like us!” King said, popping his head up from where he’d been napping on the couch. At the time, it was one of those things that freaked Luz out, that a person could be both awake and asleep at the same time, but over time she got used to it. “I doubt you’ll ever do it, though. Your range is severely stunted, kid.”

“I’ll have you know,” Maritza had said, fluttering up to perch on the arm of the couch as she and Luz entered the living room more fully. She was owl-shaped, then, puffing out her brownish-gray speckled chest. “Nine feet is perfectly respectable for a kid my age.”

Eda and King had shared a look, one that Luz now recognizes as their ‘trying not to laugh’ one. But it was Eda who broke first, snorting out a laugh. “Sure, kiddo,” she’d said, “maybe for humans.”

* * *

“Amity!” Alma shrieks, and she throws herself out of her hiding spot, claws skidding against the floor. “Luz, you have to help me, she’s _stuck,_ that thing is hurting her, I don’t—”

“I’ll help!” Luz is saying before Alma is even done talking. “Of course I’m going to help, I just…” her eyes fall onto Amity’s diary, which she had dropped when she got grabbed, and she gets an idea. “Alma, can I use your diary real quick? I won’t read anything, I just need it to write something.”

“That’s fine,” Alma says. She’s stumbling on her paws, tipping heavily to one side, and Maritza rushes to lean against her, shrinking down into her capybara form to better match the smaller daemon in size. “I have to—”

“Luz, hurry up, I don’t know how far apart they can be!” Maritza yells.

“I know, I know, I’m trying!” Luz says, scribbling faster. She needs some way to take down monster-Otabin and Maritza will need something for monster-Fia, and she’s not sure desperately scribbling in some hopes an idea will come to her is going to cut it. She stands and writes as she does so. “Here, run while I do this. Alma, what’s your range, you aren’t—”

“I’m fine,” Alma interrupts, “it’s—80 feet, up there.”

Eighty feet. Luz pauses her writing just long enough to share a look with Maritza. The Boiling Isles, _honestly._

Off in the distance, Amity screams. Alma immediately charges the direction her voice came from. Right! Rescue mission. Luz doesn’t actually have much of an idea as to how to save Amity, though even without a plan she’ll still absolutely charge in there.

Maritza glances back at her, and then grins. “Luz,” she says, “I found our idea,” and she leaps forwards and lands as a lioness.

Luz’s awesome entrance is ruined just slightly by Alma charging into the room Amity is being kept in—that same one Luz had found her reading to kids what feels like forever ago even though it was just a few hours—and almost instantly getting pounced on and pinned by monster-Fia. But Luz isn’t about to let that stop her: she and Maritza appear in a burst of purple smoke. They don’t look exact like The Good Witch Azura-Leandro, what with Luz’s costume drawn entirely from memory and her own interpretations, and Maritza being a lion _ess,_ rather than a lion like Leandro is, but it’s close enough.

“Did it look cool?” Luz asks.

“Yes, very, whatever, will you _get me out of this thing!”_ Amity yells. Monster-Otabin has gotten her trapped in the massive pages of his own book, one arm already sewn in and two-dimensional.

“Right, right,” Luz says, writing _Luzura takes out her trusty staff_ in Amity’s diary, and grabbing the staff as it’s generated. “Okay, I’ve got—”

Her charging monster-Otabin is cut off rather abruptly when he grabs her staff and breaks it in half.

“Really?” Amity asks, when Luz is grabbed and pinned in the book with Amity.

“Look, I tried, it’s not like I had that much time,” Luz says. “Plus, Maritza is still free!”

“Not for long!” Maritza yelps, ducking a swipe from monster-Fia. Even though the spiderlike daemon isn’t moving, still keeping Alma trapped, her wings are sharp at the tips, and Maritza can’t get close without taking one to the face. “Stop _doing_ that, you stupid—”

She roars when she’s cut across the nose, stumbling backwards. Luz feels the pain like the sudden sharp sting of a papercut, and winces. She feels it like a pounding headache when Maritza, too, is pinned.

“Great, now you’ve killed both of us,” Amity says as monster-Otabin returns to his sewing. “I never wanted to find out what would happen if I was sewn into a monstrous book by my favorite childhood character without Alma, but I guess I’m about to!”

“I.” Luz can’t _do_ anything. At least monster-Otabin is sewing her in, currently, even as she tries to cringe away. Better her than Amity, though it’s not like that’s going to help in a few minutes. She loses one arm—it’s…not _exactly_ like a limb falling asleep, but it’s so numb she can hardly feel it. Maritza is still struggling, though weakly, and Luz can tell she’s straining, trying to shift, but with the weight from monster-Fia it’s impossible. Maybe Luz could swing the book free with Amity’s help, run a little that way, but she’d only be able to get nine feet before collapsing. “Amity…”

“Let—us— _go!”_ Alma yells, and she _changes._

Her entire form ripples, and no longer is she that white fox, but instead she is something sharp and armored, the largest scorpion Luz has ever seen: easily as big as capybara-Maritza, maybe bigger. She’s not a rival in size for monster-Fia, but she obviously doesn’t have to be: she jabs her stinger into the larger daemon’s side, and monster-Fia shrieks in pain, flailing her wings and throwing herself into the air. Luz feels the loss of pressure like a breath of air even as Maritza whimpers and shrinks from lion to jerboa.

“You said you were Settled!” is all Luz can manage to splutter, wanting to jab an accusing finger into Amity’s chest even though she’s well aware she can’t do that. Still, she kicks against the book she’s stuck to and tries to turn on the girl next to her. “You _lied?”_

“Is that really the biggest deal right now?!” Amity retorts. “Our daemons are free, do you have a plan?”

“I—right,” Luz says, and after a quick explanation to Amity, they’re able to unbalance the book and fall forwards, catching themselves on arms and legs to run. Alma’s already back to that fox-form, and she carefully dips down to carry Maritza by the nape of her neck before charging after Luz and Amity.

Behind them, monster-Otabin and his daemon roar, and start charging after them. Luz sees monster-Fia’s shadow first, but they’re able to avoid her enough to come to a stop behind some shelves, panting. Alma places Maritza down gently, before darting for Amity and starting to claw at her restraints. Maritza lifts her head and smiles weakly at Luz. Her cut looks worse with her this small, across the entirety of her face, but with a shuddering breath she shifts into her maned-wolf form.

“Ow,” Maritza whines, but she limps forwards too, biting at Luz’s own restraints. Her teeth don’t cut through the thread, and she frowns. “Ugh, this is gross.”

“It really is,” Alma agrees. She’s balanced herself on Amity’s one shoulder and against the book, gnawing at the thread around Amity’s arm.

“Thanks for coming after me,” Amity says, quietly.

Luz snorts. “Well, duh,” she says. “I’m not a horrible person. I wasn’t about to leave you to die.” She wants to ask about the whole not-being-Settled thing—she thinks she’s owned some sort of explanation after all of this—but because her luck is awful, she doesn’t get anything. Well, she gets something, that something just happens to be monster-Fia landing before them with a sound almost like a laugh, and monster-Otabin reappearing, brandishing his needle.

Maritza bites harder, but it doesn’t do anything.

“You bite and kick and scream and shout,” Monster-Otabin says, and throws his needle, “but friendship always will win out!” It lodges into the book they’re stuck in and he starts pulling them back to him. Monster-Fia stalks after them, ready to snatch their daemons if they try to run.

Luz looks around desperately for anything to grab. Maritza bares her teeth at monster-Fia, crouched protectively over Luz, but that doesn’t stop anything. Monster-Otabin is the one pulling the book, and even if the gash scorpion-Alma left down monster-Fia’s side has slowed her down, no amount of snarling is going to scare her away. Maritza whines and presses her nose to Luz’s one free hand.

Amity’s able to grab something, a ladder as they pass it, but that doesn’t work, either: monster-Otabin doesn’t stop pulling. Amity’s page is ripped lose, sending her and Alma flying.

_At least Amity’s free,_ Luz thinks, and nudges her daemon. They won’t be any good if they’re both trapped.

“Figure something out,” Luz whispers to her, when Maritza refuses to move. “Maritza, _please.”_

“If this is how we die I’m never forgiving you,” Maritza says, finally, shifting into an owl and darting up just as monster-Otabin finishes dragging Luz in. Maritza circles around them, frantic, but it’s not like she can do anything. Luz can only stare up at her and hope Amity can figure something out.

Monster-Otabin sews her in without a care in the world. First her other arm, then her legs, until it’s just her head that is left, and Luz is watching her daemon and thinking _what happens to her if I’m stuck in here?_

She never finds an answer to that question. Before monster-Otabin can finish, Luz hears Amity muttering something, and then, “Maritza! Catch!” and a giant eraser is tossed into the air. Maritza dives after it as an eagle owl, catching the eraser in her talons. She spins around mid-air and plummets towards Luz, cries, “we aren’t dying today!” and drags the eraser across the tiny book pressed into monster-Otabin’s chest.

That does it. Monster-Otabin and his daemon shrink, their drawn-on features disappearing, and Maritza is already a maned wolf and licking Luz’s face, trying to bite through the thread as she does so.

“I knew you’d figure something out!” Luz says, laughing, and she brightens even more when Amity and Alma come over. “Amity! You saved my life!”

“Just repaying the favor,” Amity says. Maritza scoots over, and Amity is able to tug the thread lose. She offers a hand to Luz to help her up, and Luz takes it.

“Thank you,” Luz says, and she looks down to Alma, who’s not a fox anymore—but some sort of insect. A bumblebee, Luz thinks, dark eyes looking up at her, fuzzy yellow-and-black body. Because this is the Boiling Isles, she’s also the size of a sparrow.

Alma flits up to tuck herself against Amity’s neck. Maritza, watching this with a tilted head, shifts herself, into her jerboa form. Luz picks her up and Maritza takes a spot on Luz’s shoulder, mirroring Alma.

Maritza’s paws rest against Luz’s collarbone. “Didn’t think Alma could be cute,” she says in a whisper.

Luz fights back a grin.

* * *

“So,” Luz says, as they’re leaving. Alma is still in that bumblebee-form, cupped in Amity’s hands, and she looks to Luz with curious dark eyes. “Why are you pretending to be Settled? It’s not like everyone else is. It’s weirder that you are than you aren’t.”

“That’s none of your business,” Amity snaps. She runs a finger down Alma’s back. Her wings flutter. “Just. Please don’t tell anybody? It’s…I have to. _Please.”_

“Okay,” Luz says, carefully. “I won’t, Amity, promise. Just…maybe rethink it? I know I don’t know why you’re doing it, but…you seem a lot more comfortable as a bumblebee.”

Amity doesn’t say anything. Alma lifts her head a little higher. Luz could swear she looks almost pleased.

Once they’re outside, Alma drops back to the ground, returning to her usual foxlike shape. “Thank you,” she says, “you’re…not the worst.”

Luz grins, a bit. “High praise from you, it seems,” she says.

She hesitates before saying the next thing, Amity and Alma already walking away, but Maritza doesn’t. “Hey!” she calls, and, when Amity turns around, “I noticed that you only have books one through four of _The Good Witch Azura-Leandro_ Would you like to borrow book five? I don’t have it with me right now but I could give it to you tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Amity says, “uh…”

Alma flicks her tail. “We’d love that,” she says.

“Great!” Luz says, and Maritza grins a wolfish grin at her side, her tail wagging ever-so-slightly. “That’s great! Um, meet you here tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow,” Amity agrees. The smile the gives in return is hesitant and small, but Luz cherishes it all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> i truly cannot believe the first daemon au im posting is for the owl house. i literally finished watching this show a week ago truly why am i like this. 
> 
> the amount of behind-the-scenes lore put into this fic is off the fucking charts. i have pages on why their daemons are what they are. i have more on what i did with eda and king despite the fact that they are in like TEN LINES OF THIS FIC THAT I DID KINDA FORCE IN THERE BC I HAD SO MANY IDEAS. i dont think i'll write anymore in this universe but if anybody wants to ask me questions about this stuff either in the comments or [on my tumblr](https://acaciapines.tumblr.com/ask) PLEASE DO i will love you forever and write you an essay if you ask me anything daemon-related <3.
> 
> thanks for reading! let these girls kiss in season 2!
> 
> EDIT: someone did ask for lore <3\. so. if you want 1.8k words about my main ideas behind this au, go [here.](https://acaciapines.tumblr.com/post/642514785459732480/thank-you-for-that-fic-ive-been-hoping-for)


End file.
